Just watching the news that morning frost has been seen on the mountains of Mars!
Polar ice was known about but equatorial frost wasn't.
How incredibly cool is that!
One hundred and fifty thousand tons of ice every sunrise at the top of the highest peaks in the solar system!
mars express/ news bank
If you had all of Gerry Anderson's vehicles, including Project SWORD and chuck in SpaceX/ Golden Astronaut too, which ones would you use to a. get to Mars and b. mine that ice at the top of giant mountains?
Is there a better toy space fleet you could send? Explorer12? Starcom! Multimac?
Current spacecraft will take 8 months to get there. How fast could you be?
Thoughts, plans, drawings and photos welcomed!
Surely the presence of polar ice would suggest the presence of frost? I always assumed it was a thing, in fact I included it in the story I set on Mars, 'Dreamcatcher' - which was aired by Celtica Radio a few years ago. Bill
ReplyDeleteIt's the fact that it's on the Martian equator that's floored scientists. They always thought the ground, even mountain tops, would be too hot for ice in that location.
DeleteSurely, it's 'dry' ice, or frozen Carbon Dioxide ?
ReplyDeleteThere's both water ice and carbon dioxide ice on Mars Mish.
DeleteTrue, but there isn't 'liquid' water, either on the surface, or in the atmosphere, as the atmospheric pressure (about 1% of Earth's) can't keep it in liquid form. It would boil off instantly, almost as in a vacuum.
ReplyDeleteSo I don't see how you get frost freezing from it onto the volcano tops, which, at high altitude, would be too cold anyway.
I would guess the water is present as a low pressure vapour and, under the right conditions it is deposited as a solid on the surface. Probably not a lot of it but over quite a large area. Don't know if the top of the mountain would be much colder than the surface as the air is so thin? I am not up enough on the details.
ReplyDeleteDon't think so Kev. Even the clouds are CO2, so no low pressure water vapour there, except over the poles in summer, when it sublimes into the atmosphere, before being lost to space.
ReplyDeleteIf they are sure that it is water frost (and it would probably have a different infra red signature to CO2 frost), then maybe it comes from that sublimated polar ice then?
ReplyDeleteNo, the sublimated water rises high into the atmosphere, above the poles, where it breaks down into oxygen and hydrogen and floats off into space.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't travel around and go back to the surface to re-constitute as dew, or frost. Hence Mars has no surface water anymore, other than that trapped in surface ice or permafrost.
It is unlikely that that would happen to every molecule, some may well still move around in what atmosphere there is (though how much I wouldn't know). If they are certain it is water frost, it must come from the atmosphere surely?
ReplyDeleteIf you want to read the published article on the discovery it's here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01457-7
ReplyDeleteWell, on the face of it, that article shoots everything I said down in flames, so I'll have to assume I got this one wrong, for now.
ReplyDeleteOne caveat.
10 or 15 years ago, NASA thought they'd found observable evidence of running surface water flowing downhill inside craters there. I suspected it was a frozen superdry dust being moved in a fluid like way by Mars-quakes, tremors, or outgassing from the surface. Years later, they reassessed their evidence and came to the same conclusion as me.
Just saying.
I'm sure we'll find out when Spacex get there.
Good call on the moving superdry dust Mish!
Delete